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Blog
Khaldeya’s Garden
By Mina Remy
May 16th, 2012
Khaldeya Soboh first learned about the urban garden project in Gaza when she saw her neighbor’s garden filled with vegetables. Although she had a bit of land near her home for years, it sat idle. That’s when she began peppering them with questions, “Who runs the project? Where can I enroll? Is there training?”
Stop the Wall's Ramallah office raided
Israeli military forces conducted an early morning raid of the Ramallah office of Stop the Wall, a civil society coalition organizing in opposition to the construction of the Separation Wall that Israel continues to build in the West Bank, and a Grassroots International partner.
Thousands of Honduran workers occupy land
By the Via Campesina
Thousands of Honduran farm workers have launched a co-ordinated land occupation, squatting on some 12,000 hectares nationwide and fuelling new tensions over land rights, authorities said.
Small-Scale Fishing Industry Washed Ashore in Gaza
The tiny motorboat’s engine coughs a couple of miles offshore and whirls to a stop. Gazing out over the aquamarine Mediterranean waters, I feel high from the fumes of cheap Egyptian diesel and the smell of sea salt. “Let’s get in,” says Mahfouz Kabariti, a fisherman, stripping down to swim trunks and diving overboard. A Palestinian friend who is a medical student also came along for the ride. We eye each other cautiously. She winks, and we both jump in the water, fully dressed, our long pants weighing us down. It’s a perfect Friday afternoon. From out here, the ubiquitous bullet holes in buildings are invisible and Gaza City looks like a coastal resort town.
Walling Off Water
By Alicia Tozour and Mina Remy
Compared to their Arab neighbors, the occupied Palestinian territories are endowed with an abundance of freshwater. Despite this fact, Palestinians do not have access to enough water to meet their daily needs or support their small farms. Although Israel’s illegal expansion into the Palestinian territories is commonly viewed as a land grab, the placement of Israeli settlements and the construction of the Separation Wall is also a strategic water grab.
Voices from International Women’s Day
Waiting for my visa interview on a dusty embroidered couch at the Afghan Embassy in Cairo, minutes turned into hours. I had recently decided to spend International Women’s Day in the countryside outside of Kabul, to learn from women there as they work towards a better Afghanistan. My mind wandered as I prepared for the journey, and I found myself reflecting on the meaning of a day set aside to celebrate women. Memories drifted through the past few years where I had spent International Women’s Day with Grassroots International’s partners in Palestine and Haiti. Years apart and worlds away, the experiences were bound by song.
Gaza Strip, 2009Brazil’s water and energy mega-grab
“Anytime a new wall is built, hundreds of acres of forest and fertile land for food production is flooded. Anytime a new wall is built, a river dies. The death of the rivers is the end of our livelihood” - José Josivaldo, Movement of People Affected by Dams, National Coordination body memberThe hugely profitable business of building dams has taken the Amazon region by storm. One hundred-forty new dams will be built in the Amazon in the next years. The lion’s share will be in Brazil, spurred on by its booming economy, but the Amazonian regions of Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, French Guyana and Guyana are also targeted by the industry.Nicaragua’s peasant women reach another milestone
After a successful campaign to protect women’s land rights, Nicaragua’s peasant women achieved another policy milestone. Along with urban-based women’s organizations, they lobbied the National Congress to pass a new women’s rights legislation. And they won. The legislation, yet to be signed into law, received broad congressional approval – 84 votes in favor out, just seven votes shy of unanimous. Grassroots International joins our Nicaraguan partners and allies in celebrating another step forward toward women’s rights and dignity.Once signed, the new law will provide stronger legal support in cases of violence against women within both domestic and public spheres, as well as the violence generated by economic injustices.Women in Africa and Asia Take the Lead to Address Climate Change
By Alicia Tozour
Today, Grassroots International honors International Women’s Day by celebrating the ongoing victories of our partners, grantees and allies in their promotion of a global social movement for women’s rights and climate justice.
Successful Steps toward Food Sovereignty
From all corners of the world, small farmers, indigenous peoples and human rights activists have been percolating solutions upward to advance their rights to land, water and food. With 2011 behind us, Grassroots International celebrates some of the victories and inroads that took place last year, all with funding from Grassroots International and our supporters. Below are just some of the highlights.
Haitian leaders call for land and housing rights
Two years following the earthquake, community-based organizations in Haiti are still advocating for the same changes and considerations as they did last year, namely land and housing rights, respect for national sovereignty in the reconstruction process and aid accountability.
Ex-Haitian Dictator will not be tried for human rights crimes
Since returning from exile last year, former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier has been treated like an old friend by Haitian President Michel Martelly, rather than a brutal dictator responsible for the deaths, torture and disappearances of thousands of Haitian citizens. Duvalier’s excesses as commander-in-chief of Haiti’s notorious “Tonton Makouts” have been denounced internationally as crimes against humanity.
Stop the Wall Youth add Vibrant Energy to a Tradition of Steadfastness in the Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination
On my last program visit to the Middle East, I had a chance to spend two days with Stop the Wall Campaign (a Grassroots International partner) staff and leaders throughout the West Bank. Through all of our conversations, two distinct but complementary themes arose – steadfastness and fierce determination from farmers who had been in the struggle for decades, and creative vibrant energy from youth who have recently taken on leadership in their local committees and in the broader movement.
US Aid to Ethiopia Supports Forced Relocations for Land Grabs
The issue of land grabs remains a critical threat to human rights, forcing millions of people off the land to make way for large-scale industrial farms. Land grabs in Ethiopia are not only threatening to dislocate farmers but are doing so with significant financial aid from the United States. Take a moment to read the information below provided by our colleagues at the Oakland Institute and the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia and take action.
Recovery in Haiti starts at the community level
Haitians, whether in Haiti or the diaspora, will always remember where they were on January 12, 2010, when tragedy shook us to our core. Devastating images emerged from Port-au-Prince after the earthquake that brought to mind cinematic depictions of the aftermath of a blitzkrieg. I had to constantly remind myself that an earthquake did this, not indiscriminate bombing. In the days that followed my heart wanted a seat on the next airplane to Haiti, but my mind grounded me on a simple fact: I had no medical training and my presence could not give the kind of help that was immediately needed. But I wanted to do something…
Trials and Tenacity in Honduran Women’s Struggle for Land Rights
Despite being denied, again, title to the land on which they have labored, there is no quit in this group of women from El Estribo.
Report from Durban: UN negotiators ignore People's Declaration, climate solutions
As UN negotiators sat in their air conditioned rooms during the last official day of the United Nations climate negotiations, I had a chance to visit a community in Pateque, Mozambique. I spoke with members of the National Peasants Union (UNAC), a member organization of the Via Campesina. They described the ways they have been impacted by climate change: the summer is hotter than they can ever remember, and they showed me large tracts of empty land where the sun had burned many of their crops (including tomatoes and cucumbers).
On Human Rights Day, POHDH, Celebrates 20 years of Human Rights Promotion and Defense in Haiti
On December 10, 2011, the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH) will celebrate 20 years of human rights promotion and defense in Haiti. A partner of Grassroots International, POHDH is a non-partisan association of eight non-profit, non-governmental Haitian rights organizations bound by shared beliefs in human rights (individual and collective), democracy, and public education around the issues of social, political, and cultural rights.
Janaina Stronzake, Youth Activist: Growing up in Brazil's Occupy Land Movement
Janaina Stronzake is a youth leader within Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) – the largest peasant movement in Latin America with over 1.5 million members.
Wisconsin Farmer speaks out at Occupy Wall Street
On Sunday, December 4, food justice activists and occupiers from as far away as Colorado, Iowa, Maine and Upstate New York joined together for the Occupy Wall Street Farmers’ March in New York’s Zuccotti Park.Among the speakers was Jim Goodman, from the Family Farmer Defenders in Wisconsin – a Grassroots International grantee and ally, and a member of the Via Campesina. Earlier in the year, Jim and Family Farm Defenders helped organize the Tractorcade to Madison, Wisconsin to show support for organized labor and the right of unions to collective bargaining. Here, he outlines the problems posed by industrial agriculture and the solution of food sovereignty in his first "mic check" speech.
Durban is Where You Are: 1000 Durbans for Climate Justice
Right now, government representatives from around the world are gathered in Durban, South Africa, for the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference – better known as the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17). Historically, these closed-door meetings are where some of the world’s largest polluting countries – including the United States – discuss (and occasionally adopt) global climate policy. At last year’s COP16 meeting in Cancun, Mexico, these governments negotiated the details of polluting and land-grabbing projects like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and other carbon-trading schemes, which are fundamentally about profit – not forests, not people, and not global w
International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
The United Nations declared November 29 to be the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People some 63 years ago.
A Global Alliance Emerges in West Africa
Selingué, Mali—Early morning on day one of the first peasant-organized international conference to stop land grabbing held in Nyéléni, Mali, delegates from more than 30 countries took their seats for the opening ceremony. Many fumbled with the bulky and crackling radios that would provide simultaneous translation, while a small group of women from across Africa gathered in the center of the open-air conference hall, their feet sinking into the sand. In a long-standing tradition of the Via Campesina, the global peasant movement, the women kicked off the events with a mistica—a ceremony intended to depict socio-political struggles and incite debate.
